How to Sync Contacts in Samsung Galaxy S & Backup to PC

In order to Sync and create a Backup of all your Mobile Phone contacts you need to first connect the Samsung Galaxy S device with your computer and run the Samsung Kies Software. The software uses the Contacts Widget to import and manage the contacts which are stored on your cell phone or PC. You can easily add, remove, or edit any contact using your Outlook Account.

In case you have used the Google Sync feature to Backup Contacts, then you will have to first make sure that the device is linked with your Google Account where the contacts are stored. Next we will have to sync and merge those contacts with the phone to create a copy on the device and use them directly.

Tap on the Left Bottom Button > Settings > Accounts & Sync > Manage Accounts. This is the section where all the accounts you have added to your device and all of which would be automatically updating data from the cloud. Next tap on the Google account where you have backed up your contacts earlier. In our case it was Gmail account which when tapped would show you three different options as shown below :

1. Sync Calendar
2. Sync Contacts
3. Sync Gmail

Tap on the second option which will enable it and all the contacts which you have had in your Google Account would be synced to the Galaxy S as shown below.

Learn to create and manage a list of your personal or business contacts stored on the phone’s memory or a SIM or USIM card. You can save names, mobile phone numbers, home phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays and more for your contacts.

Import or export contacts
In Idle mode, open the application list and select Contacts.
Press Bottom Left Button > More > Export/Import.
Select an option to import or export.
For importing contacts, select an importing option and select OK.

Finally in order to backup these contacts you will have to run the Samsung Kies again and then click on the GT-i9000 > Contacts > Save to PC.

Next you will be asked the location where you would like to Store the Kies Contacts – .spb file on your computer along with a password to make sure others cannot access the Phonebook stored data. Once done all the contacts are stored and ready to be restored or Transferred to PC whenever you need them back.

The contacts on the Samsung Galaxy S are very confusing and poorly documented. Has anyone written a guide to contacts on the Android operating system, what joining contacts does, etc? And how about a guide to synchronising the various address books we all accumulate?

Kies Outlook Sync does a good job of copying contacts onto the phone.
– If I add a new contact in Outlook and then sync, it appears on the phone
– If I edit the contact on the phone and then sync, the correction appears in Outlook.

However, there are lots of problems:
– Usually when I try to use Kies to save contacts to the PC, it hangs, and I have to use task manager to terminate it. Even task manager takes ages to stop it: As soon as I tell task manager to close the non responding application Kies, the hard disk light starts flashing, and hard disk activity continues for about 30 seconds before the application closes.
– If I add a contact on the phone and then do a sync in Kies, the new contact does not appear in Outlook.
– I’ve got multiple entries for the same contact in the phone: One version seems to have come from Outlook, another from Skype, another from Gmail, and I don’t know where the fourth came from. The phone has some option to join these contacts, so that only two or three show, but they don’t sync over to Outlook, and it’s not clear what “joining” means
– When I create a contact on the phone, it gives me three choices for where to store the contact: Google, Phone or SIM.
– – Contacts stored in Google will appear on the phone contact list, but not in contacts on Kies, and not in Outlook after a sync
– – Contacts stored in the Phone will appear on the phone contact list and on the Kies contact list, but not in Outlook after a sync
– – Contacts stored on the SIM are not seen in Contacts on the phone (even though that was the application that created them) and are not seen in Kies and do not appear in Outlook after a sync.
– There is no setting the options to control what happens if there is a conflict between Outlook and Samsung. Both Palm and Nokia synchronising software provide these type of settings: For example, Outlook to over ride Phone, Phone to over ride Outlook, latest edit to over ride the other, or in case of conflict create duplicate entries and draw attention to them and so on.
– There is no log of what synchronisation has done, so I can’t see what was added, changed or deleted.
– While using Kies, if I press the home key on the phone to have a look at Contacts on the phone, it disconnects from Kies (fair enough) but there seems to be no way to re-connect except to unplug and replug.
– If I leave Contacts running on the PC when I disconnect the phone, the list of contacts disappears and it tells me they will be loaded when I connect the phone. However, when I connect the phone, it goes through the loading process and tells me there are no contacts.
– The Kies function to back up the phone gives me an option to back up contacts. This runs for about 5 minutes, then reports that backup failed with no explanation.

Hi Amit,
Thanks for your work.
What is really needed in Android systems (I don’t really know the others), is a fuul backup tool (like Acronis in Windows systems). A tool to save all your personnal information in your Android mobile and not only contacts, multimedia files, etc.. which can be done easely by a lot of softwares.
I’m thinking in your notes, your data’s for each apk,, etc.. a whole “ISO” image which can be restored easely.
Maybe you know something about this?

It’s year and a half since my post above, I’ve been struggling with Kies ever since. It’s one of the worst pieces of software I’ve ever worked with, but I have failed to find an alternative to synchronise contacts between my Samsung Galaxy and Outlook. I disconnected my Gmail account, cleared my SIM, and just tried to have contacts in Outlook and the Galaxy. Kies still makes a mess of it. It crashes, it swaps the first and second names of some (but not all) of my contacts in Outlook and it duplicates some contacts (but not others). I took the (frequent) updates until I found one that worked, then avoided updates. However, after a couple of months, it stopped working again, and updating Kies failed to solve the problem. Kies runs to 15%, then hangs. I have failed to find any way around it. I’ve tried all the usual tricks – switch everything off and on again, Synchronise notes before contacts or contacts first, reset the synchronisation log, update Kies software. Kies just won’t complete a contacts synchronisation. If I need to replace the phone, I’ll look at HTC.